To the great surprise of everyone, Charlie somehow got ahold of a gun.

Charlie is contrarian by nature and spent the past two years in a juvenile detention center after being convicted of an armed robbery at Poncho’s Candy Store. When the middle child, 15-year-old Charlie Bailey (nickname: Cha), returns to live with Ty’ree and Lafayette, challenges ensue. Ty’ree still feels great guilt over his father’s death as a little boy, he was the one prodding his father to go save the woman. When he was a young child, Ty’ree saw his father, named Layfayette, save a white woman and her dog from drowning in a freezing lake in Central Park. He, like Lafayette, is also haunted by death. 22-year-old Ty’ree Bailey is slightly resentful that he gave up a scholarship to MIT to become a full-time caretaker for his brothers he was planning to work for NASA. At times, Laf imagines he can see his mother and talk to her. Her name was Miracle, hence the novel’s title. Laf relates how he tries to hold on to his mother by learning her language, Spanish, and studying photos of her.

He lives in fear that what little family he has left-his two older brothers-will leave him like she did. The three brothers had a mother born in Puerto Rico and an African-American father born in Brooklyn, New York. Though everyone agrees he couldn’t have helped her, he continues to blame himself for her death. She was diabetic, and he found her in a coma. The protagonist and first person narrator, 12-year-old Lafayette Bailey (nickname: Laf), can’t get over the death of his mother, who he saw die from an adverse reaction to insulin. Though the novel takes place over the course of only 48 hours, it Is loaded with powerful flashbacks to give readers the full story of the orphaned Bailey brothers. Miracle's Boys centers around themes of guilt, emotional trauma, gang violence, and brotherly love. She received the National Book Award for Children’s Literature in 2014 for her novel Brown Girl Dreaming. The novel won the 2001 Coretta Scott King Award, given to the best book primarily intended for an African-American youth audience. Miracle's Boys (2000) by American author Jacqueline Woodson follows a seventh grade boy grieving the recent death of his mother.

Miracle's Boys by Jacqueline Woodson